2025 Hyundai Tucson: Gas-powered SUV makes the case for a hybrid
The 2.5-liter engine provides the kind of mediocre performance and unnecessary roughness that has plagued run-of-the-mill vehicles since the beginning of cars.
2025 Subaru Forester Touring vs. 2025 Hyundai Tucson Limited vs. 2025 Mazda CX-50 Turbo: Battle of a few of the many, many small SUV choices.
This week: Hyundai Tucson
Price: $41,870 as tested. Fancy paint, $470; carpeted floor mats, $210
Conventional wisdom: Car and Driver likes the “chic appearance, classy and roomy cabin, agreeable road manners,” but not that it “needs more horsepower,” and has “disappointing real-world fuel economy.”
Marketer’s pitch: “Updated style. Upgraded tech. Up for adventure.”
Reality: Ups and downs.
What’s new: The Tucson gets a facelift for 2025, and as an added bonus it gets more drive modes, more safety tech features, a bigger touchscreen, and more.
Competition: Dodge Hornet, Honda CR-V, Kia Sportage, Mazda CX-50, Subaru Forester, Toyota RAV4. It’s a well-filled category.
Up to speed: On the bright side, the Tucson’s 2.5-liter engine definitely does not feel slow.
It feels wild.
At first, with almost every pullout, especially in low-speed situations, I kept picturing the Jeeps from the old TV series M.A.S.H., the way they bucked and jerked through the dirt hills of Malibu masquerading as Korea like an angry yearling. Pass the Dramamine.
I did notice the Tucson becoming easier to live with over time, so I imagine I adjusted to it.
If the Tucson was worth adjusting to, I might have forgotten the opening struggles. But the jerkiness masks a sedentary machine, one that takes 8.8 seconds to reach 60 mph, according to Car and Driver. That’s awful, and it’s unclear why the 187 horses would be so indifferent.
And it’s half a second slower but with a significantly less oomph-y feel than last week’s Forester.
A Tucson hybrid, which performs much better, and a plug-in model are also available.
On the road: The bucking doesn’t stop when you let off the gas and head into the turns.
The Hyundai Tucson handling left me a little worn out at first. I dreaded taking the family for a ride because I knew I was going to suffer no end of harassment for the wonky handling and zigzag feel.
On the bright side, though, over the next few days, the Tucson became nicer to drive overall. Keep out of Normal mode and the handling smartens up a bit, and the vehicle is sized nicely to get through narrow roads and curves. But sharp corners have no zig, and uneven surfaces can be rough.
Shifty: The Tucson’s 8-speed automatic also served poorly. A ride up a long, steepish hill toward home showed off its lack of prowess, hunting for gears and refusing to change easily even when a lower gear was desperately called for. This problem stayed throughout testing.
Driver’s Seat: The Tuscon is quite comfortable, with a cushy seat that adjusts to the dashboard nicely. In fact, the Lovely Mrs. Passenger Seat gushed about the comfort and feel.
The tall window glass solves a big Tucson problem: Its windows grew progressively more difficult to see out of when moving from the front to the back.
Friends and stuff: The rear seat in the Tucson Limited is one of the vehicle’s brightest spots. The seats feel just right, almost soft, and there’s a bit of recline action available. Legroom, headroom, and foot room are all plentiful, and the middle-seat passenger has a short, wide hump that is foot friendly.
The seat-folding mechanism features simple levers on the side of the seat and simple releases near the rear door, and these actually spring the seat into folded position. Many SUVs and crossovers leave drivers running from place to place or reaching over long cargo holds.
Cargo space is 41.2 cubic feet behind the rear seat and 80.3 when it’s folded, much larger than the Forester.
Towing capacity in the Tucson is 2,000 pounds, one-third more than the Forester.
In and out: Vehicles in this category are among the easiest for egress, and the Tucson is no different.
Play some tunes: The tone controls are nested in the new, larger 12.3-inch touchscreen, but not too terribly far. The home screen features six large icons that are easy to understand at a glance.
Dials control tuning and volume, and a row of buttons gets you around.
Sound from the Bose Premium Audio system is just short of good, getting partway there with some tone adjustments but then leaving your ears in the lurch. Call it a B or so.
Keeping warm and cool: The HVAC controls are on an ebony touch pad just below the stereo controls, and they function fine. Dials handle the temperature, though.
Fuel economy: The Tucson averaged about 25 mpg in 225 miles including me; my own report is 20 mpg around town. Both numbers seem disappointing for such a compact vehicle, but they are only slightly worse than last week’s Subaru Forester.
Where it’s built: Montgomery, Ala.
How it’s built: Consumer Reports predicts the Tucson reliability to be a 4 out of 5.
In the end: I wish there were a better gasoline power train in the Tucson, but fortunately there are hybrid and PHEV versions, both of which would make better companions.
Next week: Let’s speed things up with the Mazda CX-50 Turbo.